FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]The usages in English laboratories in relation to this experiment are in accord with Professor Richet's views.—(W. D. H.)[2]It may not be known to many readers, that it is possible to keep alive for hours and even days the heart entirely removed from the body of a dead mammal. On such a heart the action of drugs can be admirably studied and demonstrated. I once had in my own laboratory a rabbit's heart that continued to beat for nearly five days after the remainder of the rabbit had served for the dinner of my laboratory attendant.—(W. D. H.)[3]The word intoxication here and elsewhere is used in its literal sense, viz., poisoning. It is not limited, as in popular parlance, to the poisonous effects of alcohol.—(W. D. H.)

[1]The usages in English laboratories in relation to this experiment are in accord with Professor Richet's views.—(W. D. H.)

[2]It may not be known to many readers, that it is possible to keep alive for hours and even days the heart entirely removed from the body of a dead mammal. On such a heart the action of drugs can be admirably studied and demonstrated. I once had in my own laboratory a rabbit's heart that continued to beat for nearly five days after the remainder of the rabbit had served for the dinner of my laboratory attendant.—(W. D. H.)

[3]The word intoxication here and elsewhere is used in its literal sense, viz., poisoning. It is not limited, as in popular parlance, to the poisonous effects of alcohol.—(W. D. H.)

We have not yet touched at the root of the problem, for physiology is not mere demonstration. The real point at issue is the search for new truths. The demonstration of an acquired truth, however important this may be, must not be confused with the research for an unknown truth. Now, physiologists claim that they have not only the right—but that it is their duty—to inflict some suffering on animals, if by so doing they diminish human suffering. I am going to put this proposition to the test.

1. It is universally recognised, except perhaps by the Brahmans, that we have the right to kill dangerous or offensive animals. I do not believe there is a man foolish enough not to kill a mosquito which is stinging him. No one would hesitate to crush a viper which is on the pointof biting him, or the caterpillar which is eating the leaves of his fruit trees. If an invasion of locusts threatens our harvest, we have the right to stamp out these legions of enemies. To refuse man the right to defend himself against his animal foes is such a ridiculous proposition that it is useless even to attempt to combat it.

Not only have we the right to wage war against offensive animals, such as rats, mice, caterpillars, locusts, bugs, mosquitoes, serpents, wolves, tigers, hyaenas, and all ferocious and mischievous animals, but we have also the right to kill such animals as are necessary for our nourishment. I am quite aware of the fact that certain religions proscribe the use of meat. I am also aware that an exclusively vegetable alimentation might be substituted for our customary mixed diet, which is both animal and vegetable. But, though a vegetable alimentation is possible, our western civilisation is bound up with the principle of a mixed diet in the ordinary conditions of life. If, indeed, alimentation should be exclusively vegetable, it would be useless to hunt, to fish, to rear poultry, to breed cattle for the market; and it would be necessary to confineour nutriment exclusively to wheat, corn, maize, rice, herbs, and fruits. Undoubtedly man, thus nourished, could live, and indeed live very well; but vegetarianism would be such a radical reform in our customs that in an article bearing solely upon vivisection I cannot handle such a vast problem.

I recognise that those anti-vivisectionists who are at the same time strict vegetarians are consistent; they live entirely on fruit and vegetables, make no use of animal flesh, for they contest the right of man to kill an animal for his nourishment. It is difficult to reply to such vegetarian,[4]for, after all, animal alimentation is not indispensable to human life. But we must take things as they actually exist. The bulk of my readers and the majority of anti-vivisectionists are not vegetarians; and it is only an innocent pastime to build up new civilisations in the fantastic realms of Utopia.

We are not, then, addressing ourselves to vegetarians, but to those anti-vivisectionists who feel no compunction in drinking broth or milk or eating the wing of a chicken, who do not shrink with horror from the sight of a cutlet, and who are capable of eating meat twice a day throughout the whole term of their existence. These people know full well that it was necessary to kill the animal which serves them for food: the ox was beaten to death; the sheep had its throat cut open; the pig was bled to death; the cod and the sardine were suffocated. I pass over the tortures which special preparations and elegant sports inflict on the animal for the mere savour of our meals: geese stuffed by force for months whilst nailed down to boards; pheasants, partridges, hares, slaughtered in the hunt; fish thrown into boats, gasping and finally dying after long, agonising struggles. All these and other tortures are inflicted by man on the animal in order to satisfy his pleasure and his appetite.

Perhaps these anti-vivisectionists have never visited a slaughter-house when the moment for killing the sheep has arrived. There, bound andstretched out on an immense table, are to be seen five hundred unfortunate sheep, with their throats thrust forth. The butcher passes in front and, with a stroke of his knife, slashes open the neck and throat of the poor wretches; the blood spouts out, convulsions rend the body, and only at the end of one minute or one and a half minutes does death supervene. This is death in all its savage horror inflicted by man on the animal. There are anti-vivisectionists who accept this. Therefore, they recognise implicitly man's right to kill animals, since they profit by such slaughter for their alimentation; they add, however, that though man has a right to kill, he has no right to cause suffering. Is there no suffering in the slaughter-house? Are anæsthetics ever dreamt of there?

2. Now it is impossible to point out the boundary line which separates the being that suffers from the being that does not suffer; and I defy any one to establish any line of demarcation whatsoever between a being capable of pain and a being incapable of pain.

Plants certainly do not suffer. Already, however, there are certain difficulties in the way ofdetermining the exact boundary line between the animal and the plant. When we expose an infusion of hay to the air, for instance, various microbes develop therein. A learned and minute analysis allows us to distinguish both bacteria and infusoria among the innumerable micro-organisms which swarm in the infusion. Now we know that bacteria are plants and infusoria are animals. If, therefore, all animal life were eliminated from experimentation, we should have no right to boil an infusion of hay, because we know that it contains infusoria which are animals.

These infusoria are so closely related to bacteria that they may be confused with the latter, as indeed has been the case up to the last few years. A number of inferior beings were formerly called zoophytes, that is to say, animal plants; and it is sheer nonsense to suppose that they are conscious of pain. Sponges, corals, sea-anemones, star-fishes, sea-urchins, possess a nervous system which is so little developed, and reactions which are so indistinct, that we can scarcely suppose they possess an intelligent consciousness, and, consequently, sensibility topain. Moreover, I do not see how their reactions would differ if they possessed the notion of pain. When we touch the tentacles of a star-fish, we notice, near the tentacles touched, a sort of agitation set up among the neighbouring tentacles, but this agitation does not extend to the tentacles of the others' arms; so that a general consciousness does not appear to exist, unless it be in a prodigiously rudimentary state, among inferior beings. In certain classes of the mollusca there is no head. Thus oysters and mussels, named on that accountacephala, have in all probability no consciousness. I would have no scruple, therefore, either in eating living oysters, or in experimenting upon living oysters and mussels, since it seems to me evident that the notion of pain does not exist in them.

It is not the same thing with insects; it is here that the first signs of pain begin to appear. Nevertheless, we must be careful to avoid confusing pain with signs of pain. When we take a worm and cut it into three segments, each of these segments will struggle and writhe in a perfect frenzy. It would, therefore, be necessary toadmit that pain existed in each of these three segments—in other words, that each fragment possesses a central seat of pain, which is absurd; it is much more rational to suppose that the perturbed movements of the animal are the result of a strong nervous excitation, and that the injury is accompanied by defensive reflex movements but provokes no painful perception.

Among the superior animals however, and especially among the vertebrata, pain exists. There can be no doubt about this, although it is impossible to know exactly in what consists the consciousness of pain in an animal; the most profound obscurity still reigns, and will perhaps always reign, over their consciousness and sensations. It would be ridiculous to deny that a dog suffers when his paw is crushed. Certainly, I fully believe that all pain is much less clearly perceived by the dog than by man. But, after all, it is a phenomenon of the same order and identical, save in intensity.

Now pain, taken in its profoundest sense, consists of two essential elements: a shock to the conscious self, theego, in the first place; and,in the second place, the prolongation of the shock. If the self is not distinctly conscious, if it does not go so far as to assert itself by the separation of that self from the external world, we cannot say that pain is possible. Theegonever asserts itself with so much force as under a very painful impression. So that among beings whose reactions are mechanical, automatic, governed by other forces than by the assertion of the self and a freely deliberate will, pain becomes so indistinct, so confused, that it probably does not exist in the strict psychological sense at all. The greatest philosopher of modern times, Descartes, imagined a system of machine-animals; this idea has been turned into ridicule by the ignorant, but nevertheless we are almost forced to return to it when we dive to the bottom of reflex movements. Now, if we are able to admit that there is a vague consciousness of the selfhood among superior animals, such as the mammalia and birds, this consciousness, as far as concerns the inferior vertebrata, is most certainly extremely hazy, if, indeed, it exists at all. I have difficulty in conceiving that a frog is able to ponder over itsego, assert its existencein presence of the external world, and say or think, ISUFFER. No being suffers unless he is able to think that he suffers, and meditate on his suffering. To suffer means to have consciousness; and as far as it is permissible for a man to picture to himself the sensations of a frog, I should say that the frog has no consciousness of suffering.

Even as regards the more highly developed vertebrata, such as birds, rabbits, and guinea-pigs, suffering is probably of a very obscure nature. It is not enough to say that an animal suffers because we see him animated by the contortions and reactions of defence. The new-born infant, which has neither intelligence nor memory nor consciousness, is probably incapable of real conscious suffering, nevertheless it screams and cries when it is hungry or when it is pricked. But these screams and tears do not suffice to allow us to affirm that the child is suffering real pain. It is a nervous excitation which is translated by the reactions of defence; it is not the conscious assertion of anegowhich has been painfully perturbed.

Further, for pain to exist the impression mustbe durable and not fugitive. The assertion of theegois not enough. It must be prolonged. A pain, however intense we may suppose it to be, which traverses the organism for a second and which leaves no painful echo behind it, is no real pain. I will allow any one to inflict the most excruciating tortures on me if he can assure me that, at the end of one second, I shall have lost all recollection of the suffering and that no trace of the torture will remain. The extraction of a tooth lasts perhaps only half a second, but you remember it all your life. In any case, for several minutes the pain continues to be atrocious. Therefore we may certainly consider that pain is a phenomenon of memory. Pain is an empty word for every being that has no memory.

From these facts we may evolve the general conclusion that, under penalty of falling into vulgar anthromorphism, we cannot apply to the pain of animals the data which have been gathered on human pain.[5]With man, the developedintelligence and vivacious memory enable pain to acquire an extreme intensity. But with animals, in proportion as the intelligence lessens and the memory becomes more rudimentary, so does pain diminish, and, without having the right to be very affirmative, as we are in profound darkness concerning the consciousness of animals, it appears to me that, as we descend the scale of the animal kingdom, pain rapidly becomes very hazy, scarcely perceived, and as indistinct as the consciousness of theego.

We have, therefore, the right to perform vivisection on beings which, because they possess noselfhood, do not suffer. Now, this absence of memory, consciousness, and intelligence extends assuredly over the whole of the vegetable kingdom, almost certainly over all the groups of the invertebrata, and also probably over all the inferior vertebrata.

Finally, there remain only the mammalia and birds which are capable of real pain. Although this pain may be obscure and indistinct, it iscertain; and we must take it into consideration or fall into barbarism; therefore we shall restrict the problem of vivisection to the vivisection of superior animals, who, alone, are capable of suffering.

FOOTNOTES:[4]The true vegetarian is an extremely rare person. The usual so-called vegetarian ought more properly to be called a non-meat eater, for he does not scruple to consume milk (intended by nature for the calf) and milk products (cream, cheese, and butter) and eggs, nor to wear garments made of wool and leather.—(W. D. H.)[5]In the little leaflet already referred to, quotation is made of a sentence from Professor Pritchard, which says that the various animals have a skin of different thickness, but that sensibility is the same among all, including man. It seems to me that Professor Pritchard has scarcely looked into the questions of general psychology.

[4]The true vegetarian is an extremely rare person. The usual so-called vegetarian ought more properly to be called a non-meat eater, for he does not scruple to consume milk (intended by nature for the calf) and milk products (cream, cheese, and butter) and eggs, nor to wear garments made of wool and leather.—(W. D. H.)

[5]In the little leaflet already referred to, quotation is made of a sentence from Professor Pritchard, which says that the various animals have a skin of different thickness, but that sensibility is the same among all, including man. It seems to me that Professor Pritchard has scarcely looked into the questions of general psychology.

A few words are first of all necessary to indicate precisely what anæsthesia is.

By definition, an anæsthetic is a substance which, without paralysing the activity of the heart and the respiration, abolishes sensibility. Indeed, whenever general sensibility is abolished, there is, at the same time, abolition of consciousness, of intelligence, and of memory. Another characteristic of an anæsthetic is that its action is of a transient nature. At the end of a certain time, it disappears; and then intelligence, consciousness, and memory return gradually with sensibility.

It is well known that the admirable discovery of general anæsthesia, allowing operations to be performed on man without the accompaniment of pain, was due to chance. It was an American dentist, Horace Wells, and his colleague, Morton(and others also perhaps), who discovered by chance that protoxide of nitrogen (commonly called laughing gas) has the power, when inhaled, of annulling all sensibility to pain for a certain length of time—sufficiently long for a surgical operation (1840). Then they discovered the effects of ether (1842). Since then, many other anæsthetics have been introduced, notably chloroform, prepared by Soubeiran in 1832, but the anæsthetic properties of which were only discovered in 1847 by Flourens and Simpson; so that physiologists and surgeons are now quite familiar with the mode of action of anæsthetics.

Anæsthetics, in appropriate doses, poison the nervous cells, which are the seat of intelligence and sensibility, but leave unimpaired the functions of the cardiac nervous system and of the nervous system governing the respiration. An individual under chloroform breathes regularly; his heart beats rhythmically, but all intelligence has disappeared; he has no longer any will or memory or reflex actions, and the most painful operations can be performed on him without provoking the smallest phenomenon of sensibility.

Further, we have no hesitation in asserting that the anæsthetised animal behaves like the anæsthetised man; that is to say, chloroform given to an animal abolishes all sensibility to pain. Vivisection, therefore, on an anæsthetised animal, does not provoke any pain. Physiologists are so convinced of this that, however humane they may be, they have no scruple in performing lengthy vivisections on an animal which is thoroughly anæsthetised.

If chloroform, for some reason or other, cannot be employed, many other anæsthetics, such as chloral and morphia, may be used. Chloral, in certain doses, produces complete anæsthesia, and it is easier to administer than chloroform. Formerly, chloral was injected, by a small puncture, into the veins of rabbits and dogs. I pointed out another method which allows one to avoid even the puncture; it is sufficient to make a rectal injection of the solution of chloral. In two or three minutes, the dog, the rabbit, or the guinea-pig, is seized with a kind of inebriety; he staggers, falls to the ground, and in about ten minutes he is completely anæsthetised. Large doses of morphia can be injected intoanimals without causing immediate death. An animal under a moderate dose of morphia does not absolutely lose all sensibility to pain; but the slight pain which he then feels is very transient. If the animal is submitted to strong excitation, he wakens for a few seconds, but soon falls back again into profound slumber. Morphia in moderate doses is not such a perfect anæsthetic as chloral or chloroform; it is therefore usual under such circumstances to administer also volatile anæsthetics like chloroform, and quite small quantities of the latter will then produce perfect anæsthesia. If, however, morphia is given in lethal doses, as is sometimes done for comparatively short experiments, it is an absolutely complete anæsthetic in itself, just as it is when a man takes a fatal dose of morphia, or of its parent substance, opium.

Nevertheless, chloroform, chloral, and ether have a very serious disadvantage for the physiologist. They abolish sensibility, but, at the same time, they abolish the majority of the reflex actions in which voluntary muscles are concerned. Now, in many experiments, it is indispensable to be able to study such reflexmovements, that is to say, the fundamental reactions of the nervous system. Thus, physiologists, more preoccupied, it must be said, with assuring the immobility than the insensibility of the animal, have had recourse to another substance,curare, the properties of which were investigated by Claude Bernard.

Curare is a poison which the natives on the banks of the Amazon prepare from a bind-weed of the strychnia family. They boil the plant with several ingredients, finally obtaining a sort of blackish resin, or gummy juice, which they place in little gourds, which can be procured also in Europe. This juice is used by South American Indians for their arrows, and physiologists use it to ensure the immobility of the animal on which they are experimenting. Curare dissolves in water, and a solution of a few centigrams injected under the skin of a dog, a cat, a rabbit, will bring about the death of the animal in a few minutes. But death is not due to the arrest of the heart's action, it is due entirely to paralysis of the respiration. Therefore the curarised animal can continue to live for several hours ifartificialbreathing be substituted forthe natural breathing which is paralysed. For several hours the animal is completely motionless; the heart beats with force and regularity, provided that the insufflation of air into the lungs introduces into the blood the quantity of oxygen necessary for the life of the tissues. Now, under these conditions, as Claude Bernard has so well demonstrated, we have no proof that sensibility is abolished also. There is immobility; there is no true anæsthesia. Take two animals, one chloroformed, the other curarised; both are equally inert; but the chloroformed animal is insensible, whilst the curarised animal retains sensibility.

It is impossible, therefore, to say that curare replaces anæsthetics, becausecurare is not an anæsthetic.[6]

Now, in 1894 I was able to discover a substance which has all the anæsthetic properties of chloroform, and which nevertheless does not abolish reflex actions, so that physiologists are able to use it for experiments which, formerly, necessitated the use of curare. This substance is calledchloralose; it is obtained by mixing anhydrous chloral with glucose. It is not necessary for me to describe here in detail its chemical or physiological properties; I will only say that in very small doses (about twenty-five centigrams) it is an excellent hypnotic for man, and that in larger doses, injected into the vein of a dog or a rabbit, it brings about complete anæsthesia without affecting either the breathing, the heart, or the reflex actions.

Since this discovery, many physiologists—and I regret not to be able to say so of every physiologist—have given up curare and use nothing but chloralose, which is a perfect anæsthetic, andwhich allows the reflex actions to be studied although anæsthesia is perfect.

It may be objected that a tiny puncture has to be made in the vein to introduce the chloralose into the circulation; but this puncture is really such a trifle that it would be sheer childishness to pay any attention to it. What doctor would hesitate to make a puncture in the skin of his patient for the injection of a solution of morphia? However, if sentimentality be pushed to such a degree as to shrink from touching the vein of a dog in order to put him to sleep, even this tiny puncture can be avoided by mixing the chloralose with the food of the animal to be experimented upon. In half an hour or three-quarters of an hour after the mixture is given he is in a state of perfect anæsthesia.

For these reasons, vivisection with anæsthesia seems to me to be quite legitimate. As soon as it is recognised that man has the right to kill the animal, he has the right to kill him as he pleases, provided he spares him all suffering.

Let us also reflect a little on this point: an animal has to die just as much as we ourselves. Now, natural death would certainly be for hima long and cruel agony, lasting several hours, several days, perhaps several weeks. Well, then, we replace hideous old age, the agony of prolonged tortures due to disease, by a dreamless sleep, which at once plunges the animal into nothingness, without his passing through the intermediary stage of necessary suffering. Is this what is called being inhuman? For my part, I shall regret on my death-bed that no physiologist will be found whose conscience will permit him, or, if so, who would have sufficient courage to help me to pass away under the influence of chloroform, ether, chloralose, morphia, or chloral, thus saving me from the throes of the final struggle, and bestowing upon me a peaceful death and an easy termination of all suffering.

FOOTNOTES:[6]In England, the Vivisection Act expressly states that curare is not to be regarded as an anæsthetic, and this proviso has been loyally accepted by English physiologists. On those rare occasions when curare is used, and the occasions are very rare indeed, and year by year they become rarer, a volatile anæsthetic such as chloroform or A.C.E. (alcohol, chloroform, ether) mixture is administered at the same time in sufficient amount to render anæsthesia absolute. One should add that since Claude Bernard's work on curare, physiologists have seen reason for doubting whether it leaves sensibility intact, as Bernard thought. But as there is doubt on the question, and the available evidence in favour of its lulling sensations is small, it is still considered advisable to retain Bernard's views, and act as though it is not an anæsthetic at all.—(W. D. H.)

[6]In England, the Vivisection Act expressly states that curare is not to be regarded as an anæsthetic, and this proviso has been loyally accepted by English physiologists. On those rare occasions when curare is used, and the occasions are very rare indeed, and year by year they become rarer, a volatile anæsthetic such as chloroform or A.C.E. (alcohol, chloroform, ether) mixture is administered at the same time in sufficient amount to render anæsthesia absolute. One should add that since Claude Bernard's work on curare, physiologists have seen reason for doubting whether it leaves sensibility intact, as Bernard thought. But as there is doubt on the question, and the available evidence in favour of its lulling sensations is small, it is still considered advisable to retain Bernard's views, and act as though it is not an anæsthetic at all.—(W. D. H.)

We must, however, give to the word "Vivisection" its largest acceptation. It is not only a question of cutting nerves, of stimulating the glands, or of exciting the muscles. There are experiments of much longer duration in which there is no mutilation properly speaking, butintoxication,[7]produced by the injection of poisons and disease germs.

It is, indeed, evident that pain can be provoked in other ways than by a sharp-edged instrument, which can always be done under anæsthesia. But may inoculation be performed? May prolongedintoxicationbe caused? To treat the question in all its fulness, we will put the problem in the following manner.

In order to study a disease, have we the right to give that disease to an animal?

For my part, there can be no doubt on the point, and I affirm that such is our right.

As a matter of fact, and as every unbiassed person is forced to recognise, it is only by experimentation that these diseases can be studied thoroughly. Clinical observation, bearing exclusively upon man, can only give incomplete results, much poorer, though its documents are multitudinous, than the results furnished by experimentation, which can be infinitely varied at will. If we were limited to the Hippocratic method of observation, which consists in studying the symptoms and the progress of a morbid affliction, we should be reduced to poor enough resources; and if meditation on the aphorisms of Hippocrates constituted the whole extent of our medical science, medical science would be a sad vacuum. Fortunately, however, such is not the case. Marvellous progress has been realised, which allows us to entertain quite other ideas than those of the Father of Medicine on the nature of diseases, and consequently on their treatment and their prevention. Those very persons who rise up in arms against physiological experimentation would not, I imagine,desire to be handed over to the care of a Hippocratic doctor if they were ill, to a doctor who took no notice of any modern discoveries under the pretext that they were acquired by experimentationin anima vili.

If, however, we wish to discuss the problem thoroughly, it will not do to remain on indefinite ground. Let us arrive at precise facts. I will mention only three discoveries, the importance of which is considerable, and which have been established solely by experimentation.

First of all, there isantisepsis. For centuries and centuries surgeons operated without understanding why it was that death struck down so unmercifully those operated upon. In vain did surgeons display great skill; in vain did the operation succeed: the patient died. Erysipelas, lock-jaw, abscess-formation and gangrene reigned supreme. Every confinement exposed the mother to death; the slightest wounds were followed by the most serious after-effects; in certain amputations, for instance, the mortality was 70 per cent. No one dared to touch either the peritoneum or the joints, because every operation on the peritoneum or on the articulations was sure to provefatal. But Lister and Pasteur came! These two men, simultaneously and concurrently, demonstrated that all disease following on an operation was the result of infection by parasites. By preventing the wounds from being contaminated by parasites, infection was prevented; for the wounds themselves are innocent, as long as they are not infected.

This is the astounding and simple truth which Lister and Pasteur established. And let no one pretend it is so simple that the data could have been furnished by clinical observation alone, for such an assertion would be contradicted by the facts.

Thousands and thousands of surgeons, right up to 1868, had understood nothing of infection. In order to understand this big word "infection," which sums up in itself the whole of surgery and the whole of medicine, it was necessary to inject pus into animals, gather the microbes which then developed in the blood of these animals, isolate the microbes, cultivate them, inject them afresh, and produce an experimental disease. It was in this manner only that we were able to understand the mechanism of antisepsis, and, consequently,apply it to the treatment of operations and wounds. Three or four volumes could be written on this subject alone, but all I can attempt here is a summary of the main points. I say without hesitation that as long as clinical medicine confined itself only to the observation of patients, it was able to understand nothing, to analyse nothing, to foresee nothing. It was necessary to experiment, to sacrifice a few hundred mice, rats, and rabbits, in order to demonstrate that erysipelas is an inoculable disease, that puerperal infection is of the same nature as purulent infection, that all these diseases are due to micro-organisms, and that certain substances, called antiseptics, can stop the development of these fatal germs.

It appears quite natural to-day (and it seems to simple minds, ignorant of the past and powerless to imagine the past, that these notions have been current from all eternity) to know that instruments, water, and linen heated to 120° contain no living germs. But this discovery is not so very old. It was Pasteur who, between 1863 and 1873, established it by some memorable experiments at the cost of a little disease given to rats and guinea-pigs.

PASTEUR IN HIS LABORATORY. facing p. 44.PASTEUR IN HIS LABORATORY.facing p. 44.

Now—and I appeal to the good sense of my readers—would it be better to efface the suffering of those rats, those guinea-pigs, those rabbits, and return to the olden times when the mortality in lying-in hospitals was often 40 per cent. (it is to-day, 0.02 per cent.!)? Must we condemn Lister and Pasteur as great criminals because they dared to inoculate microbes into a few rabbits and bring about in those unfortunate animals—they would have died a long time ago even without that—experimental ailments in order to ward off malignant diseases from thousands and thousands of human beings?

The second discovery which I shall mention is that of the infectiousness of tuberculosis. Thousands and thousands of doctors had had tuberculous patients under their care. Three thousand years ago, Hippocrates described tuberculosis with as much precision as could be done to-day. Illustrious physicians in every land had tried to analyse the nature of this terrible diseaseand to unravel its cause; nevertheless, they were unable, from clinical observation alone, to prove what is to-day quite commonplace knowledge, viz., that tuberculosis is infectious. In 1864, a French doctor, Villemin, conceived the simple and ingenious idea of inoculating rabbits with the tuberculous matter found in the lungs of consumptive patients. These rabbits became tuberculous; they died in a few weeks with tuberculous granulations in lungs and liver. It was thus demonstrated that tuberculosis was infectious. Later on, in 1878, Koch discovered that the active agent of this infection is a special microbe. But, however important may be the discovery of the microbe of tuberculosis (the tubercle-bacillus of Koch), the essential dominating fact is that tuberculosis is infectious.

As soon as this great fact became known, a profound revolution occurred in social hygiene, in the treatment and in the prevention of this terrible evil. We know now the consumptive man carries in his lungs and sputum the germ capable of developing the same evil in others; consequently we know how to preserve ourselvesagainst tuberculosis. We must purify or destroy the habitations wherein consumptives have lived, burn or carbolise all the sputum, make spitting in public places a punishable offence, take sanitary measures against unhealthy meat, defend our children against contaminated milk—in a word, we are armed against a disease, the sole and unique cause of which, as experimentation alone has taught us, is infection.

Formerly it was believed that diseases were due to a sort of divine anger, or, what amounts pretty much to the same thing, to certain imperceptible epidemic exhalations stretching over whole populations, or attacking isolated individuals, striking like an exterminating angel, as his fancy chose, such or such an unhappy victim. A sort of will or caprice, governed only by chance, was exercised in relation to this disease, and man was powerless, because he was unarmed against chance. He did not even think of it. He resigned himself to being ill, and waited for the disease, without doing anything to fight against it, benumbed under a kind of Oriental fatalism. The doctor shook his head, bore testimony to theevil, and confined himself to prescribing inefficacious treatments which were only, according to a celebrated saying, a long meditation on death.

But the times have changed; there is no longer any fatality in tuberculosis; there is imprudence, there is error, there is vice, and, specially, social vice. We may almost say that, if there are still consumptives in our midst, it is because of our defective social institutions. We leave innumerable populations steeped in misery, seven or eight individuals living in the same infected hovel. In the slums of our large cities, swarms of infants are to be found morally and materially perverted by misery. Therefore, if consumption still exists, it is our own fault; it is no longer as it was in olden times, when we knew not, becausenowwe know. The plague can be battled with; and if it still has so much power left, it is because we have not the courage to apply to public and individual hygiene the treatment science has definitely shown us should be applied. To foresee is to know; and now that we know, we must not forget that it is to experimenters, and to experimentersalone, that we are indebted for this great benefit.

Moreover, however imperfect our defence against tuberculosis may still be, it is by no meansnil; great progress has been made; the mortality has decreased in a considerable proportion. During the last twenty-five years, it has decreased by about 25 per cent., and notably in England, where the laws of public hygiene, energetically upheld by the good sense of the people, are strictly applied, the mortality has diminished by 50 per cent. This is only a beginning, and the near future will bring about the complete extermination of the disease.

Now, honestly, I ask if the rabbits which Villemin sacrificed weigh more in the scales of universal progress, and even in public morality, than the three millions of individuals who, by progress in hygiene, have been preserved from an early and painful death. I estimate at a high price the life and the sufferings of fifty rabbits, but, at the risk of appearing a barbarian, I prefer, to these fifty rabbits, the three millions of young people who have beensaved by Villemin's discovery, and the millions which it will still save.

All the more so, inasmuch as experimental studies on tuberculosis have not only preserved men; they have also preserved animals. Thanks to Koch, there is now a very simple way of recognising if an animal is or is not tuberculous. Koch was able to extract from tubercle bacilli, a substance which he has calledtuberculin. At first he thought tuberculin cured the disease; but this was an error. Subsequent experiments showed that tuberculin exercised quite a different action to that of healing. It has the property, when injected in small doses into a tuberculous animal, of provoking an intense fever, whilst it produces no reaction whatsoever in a normal animal. If, therefore, tuberculin is injected into every animal in the cattle shed, we can feel sure—and this is impossible otherwise—that such or such animals are tuberculous or healthy. All cows that show a rise in temperature after an injection of tuberculin are tuberculous; the others, on the contrary, are in good health.

Thus the sanitary inspection of stables and cattle-sheds can be carried out thoroughly; and we are now able to protect not only men but also animals from the disease of tuberculosis.

Such results could only have been obtained at the cost of many and methodical experiments. Whatever may be the genius of anti-vivisectionists, they would never have been able to imagine anything similar had they been left to their own intellectual powers. It is not in the study that we are able to discover this long series of unforeseen, extraordinary, almost miraculous facts which laboratory experimentation has been able to find out. Man, said Pascal, tires of conceiving sooner than Nature tires of providing; and experimentation is man's method of interrogating Nature.

The third discovery which I shall take as an example demonstrating the value of experimentation, is the history ofSerotherapy. And I may be permitted to dwell somewhat on this subject as I had the good fortune, in 1888, of making the decisive experiment which was the beginning of serotherapy.

Whilst inoculating some rabbits and dogs with a microbe taken from pus (Staphylococcus pyosepticus), I developed a certain disease both in the rabbits and in the dogs. But the dogs did not die, whilst all the rabbits died from the results of the inoculation. I thought then that, the cause of that resistance being due to the difference of blood, I might be able to make the rabbit refractory to the infection by injecting it with the blood of a dog in normal health. The experiment succeeded. The rabbits which had received the blood of the dog, when they were afterwards infected with the staphylococcus, became very ill but did not die. Later on, I took, not the blood of a dog in normal health, but the blood of a dog that had received the infection of the staphylococcus and had recovered from that infection, and I injected this blood into the rabbits.Now the rabbits that received the blood of the infected, healed dog had acquired complete immunity to this form of microbe infection: the principle of serotherapy was discovered (5th Nov. 1888).

"L'ENFANT." In Musée du Luxembourg, Paris. facing p. 53."L'ENFANT."In Musée du Luxembourg, Paris.facing p. 53.

Since then, serotherapy has been applied, by Behring in Germany and by Roux in France, to diphtheria (1892). These two savants showed that the blood of animals, and especially of horses, that had been infected with diphtheria and cured, could, when injected into patients attacked by diphtheria, diminish, in an extraordinary proportion, the duration and intensity of the disease. There is no other treatment for diphtheria to-day. A doctor is guilty, and even criminal, if he does not use it, for the therapeutic results of this treatment are marvellous.

I do not speak of clinical observation only. All those who have seen the effects of one of these injections of serum on children down with diphtheria are veritably stupefied at the resurrection which they witness only a few minutes after the injection. The unfortunate child with his purple face and convulsed limbs, scarcely breathing, comes back to fresh life as soon as he has received the beneficent injection of serum. The facts are so decisively clear that even if we have only seen them once we can never again forget them. But I shall simply call the attention of my readers to the following statistics, the result of more than 500,000 observations made in England, in the United States, in France, inRussia, in Germany, in Italy, in Austria, in fact everywhere: the death-rate in diphtheria before 1892 (for the serotherapic method took four years to become known and practised) was 45 per cent. After 1892, this death-rate fell to 12 per cent.[8]Consequently, out of every hundred patients suffering from diphtheria, thirty are saved by the serotherapic treatment.

Let us stop for a moment to consider these figures, which seem mere abstractions to those who have not reflected. At the present time, about 300,000 children per annum in France are attacked by diphtheria; that makes 4,500,000 from 1892 to 1907. The proportion of 30 per cent. is therefore 1,350,000. The number of children who have been saved in France alone by serotherapy in fifteen years is therefore 1,350,000. Let us put it in round numbers at one million only; this would be sufficient to justify the death of the twenty-five dogs and the one hundred rabbits which I sacrificed, and ofthe two hundred horses which Behring and Roux used for the preparation of the anti-diphtheria serum. A million families in mourning, a million hopes mowed down in the bud! Only fanatics would dare to say this weighs for nought in the balance.

Moreover—and why should I not say it aloud?—this so-called humanity of anti-vivisectionists seems to me the antithesis of humanity. To satisfy a conception which they have forged out of a certain hazy ideal, they make quick shrift of human life and suffering. A hundred weeping mothers, a hundred unfortunate children with gaping throats, suffocating, gasping, the death-rattle at hand—that is what these sensitive souls declare is nothing beside one rabbit which has had to receive a little blood of a dog into its abdomen! These philanthropists are creatures of a fixed idea! Let humanity suffer, weep and die! What does that matter, provided that their fixed idea, driven right up to the hilt of delirium, triumphs! After all, if they persist in believing that the faint and uncertain suffering of a sick rabbit is not worth the certain and excruciating sufferingof a thousand human creatures, I can say but one thing: I pity them from the very bottom of my heart.

These examples—antisepsis, tuberculosis, and serotherapy—will suffice perhaps to justify experimental pathology. There is now another experimental science which I am going to try to justify also. This isTherapeutics.

We are only able to learn the action of medicaments by studying the action of poisons, for all medicaments in strong doses are poisonous. Now, to understand a poison thoroughly, we must experiment with it on the animal. Simpson administered chloroform to men only after Flourens had determined its anæsthesic properties on animals. Liebreich, after he discovered chloral, studied its physiological properties on animals, and only after long and learned studies was he able to give it a place in human therapeutics. At the present day, chloral is one of the most extensively used medicines, one which has relieved innumerable patients. When I carried out my research on chloralose, before studying its effects on myself,I began by giving it to cats and fowls. I was ignorant of the degree of toxic power of this new, still unknown substance, and, at the risk of appearing very pusillanimous, I did not wish to begin on myself; I preferred trying it on a fowl. Not that I estimate my life very highly, but after all, however low an estimate I may place on my own life, I think it is worth more than that of a fowl. Many other medicines have been thus experimented with on animals before it was possible to ascertain their effects on man. Kocher discovered cocaine, Knorr antipyrine; and these two admirable medicines did not find their way into therapeutics until their mode of action and their toxic power had been ascertained on animals.

In a word, the whole of present-day therapeutics has for foundation, not only ancient clinical observation, which it would be supremely foolish to disdain, but also the experiments of modern times, which it would be equally foolish to proscribe.

Perhaps certain people imagine that there are no therapeutics, and that we can replace by auto-suggestion, prayer, or hypnotisation, everythingwhich doctors generally use to cure or allay disease. It is difficult to reply to such objections, because those who make them have never opened a work of science nor seen a patient. They see things as they wish to see them. They imagine that the exterior world is constructed according to their interior vision, and they do not deign to come into contact with reality. They believe that enthusiasm can supply the place of instruction, and that a certain doubtful generosity can replace profound and patient study. They maintain perhaps that chloral does not make one sleep, that salicylate of soda does not alleviate rheumatic pains, that bromide of potassium does not check attacks of epilepsy. Perhaps they will even continue to say so for a long time to come. Let them talk; progress will be made without them.

Back to Index Next